With over 2 million apps in the App Store, it is easy to forget that Google and its little band of merry apps aren’t only about search and email. They are also a bit about education and creativity, which is what this article is all about.

The strength of the app is in the different ways you can discover interesting content. It opens with a fresh featured item of interest every day. You can search artifacts by medium, study art movements, go back to historical events, locate places, and even filter by color or objects.

Thanks to high-resolution photography, you can pinch and zoom into the brush strokes and look at the paintings or artworks in finer detail.

Now, you can turn any Live Photos into a GIF with this unique experimental app from Google. Motion Stills not only does the “conversion” but also uses image stabilization technology to remove the jerkiness from Live Photos. GIFs with sound can also be shared with apps like Instagram which does not allow Live Photos yet, or take it further by combining a series of Motion Stills into a mini-movie.

Keep the VR glasses on, we are heading into the future with interactive stories and immersive storytelling. Google Spotlight Stories is a world of 360° stories specially made for the mobile by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group.

The selection is small now but you can spot the likes of Justin Lin (Fast & Furious, Star Trek Beyond) and Glen Keane (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) here. You can watch the stories unfold on YouTube but it won’t be as much fun because the app is specifically designed to use the VR experience and smartphone sensors to make the experience interactive.

For example, when you move your phone to any scenes, you are able to move within the virtual world and unlock mini-stories within the story. The app also produces 3D sound, though you’ll need a good set of headphones for this to work properly.

iPhone users get a dedicated app while Android users can watch the stories with the YouTube app. Google Spotlight Stories are compatible with Cardboard. Don’t forget to click the menu and switch on Download over WiFi only. The movies pack a big punch.

The app is intuitive – start recording with a single tap. All recording settings (e.g. enable recording with landscape mode only) can be found under Settings. Editing the start and end points is as simple as dragging a pair of handles across the timeline. Drag and drop to re-order clips, remove them, or add another saved clip. You can add your own soundtracks or use free soundtracks supplied by YouTube.

Correct your videos with color correction and use video stabilization to smoothen the shakes. Upload it to your channel and share with your network.

If your channel is up and coming, pair it with the YouTube Creator Studio app to manage your channel on the go.

Get secure access to your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer from anywhere with Chrome Remote Desktop. Think of it as a skinny TeamViewer. Once you’ve set up the remote connection via a Chrome browser extension, you can access your entire computer from your iPhone. You can also give remote support to anyone, access your personal files and folders, or monitor any process on your desktop while on the move.

Google search is such a need that we often switch to it for very common stuff. Gboard speeds up these searches by letting us search and send right from the keyboard, instead of switching apps every time. The built-in keyboard handles the usual Google searches (flight numbers, restaurant addresses and so on) and even lets you search for GIFs and emoji you can paste into a message field.

The summarized lessons are ideal for startup founders, small business owners, marketing executives at big companies with a spare 5 minutes in hand. The app saves your progress even as it updates, with new lessons every week.

Who’s Down is invite only for now but could be worth watching. Google is targeting teens and school goers with this social app as it asks for a school name. Or is it just another testing of the social waters (there’s also Google Spaces) by Google?

The idea is to move away from the noise of larger group messaging apps and keep things simple. Very simple as the screenshot below shows you:

Google Authenticator can issue codes for multiple accounts from the same phone. But, every Google Account needs a different secret key, which you will get by going through the setup process as explained in the support page above.

Now, let’s end by making the world a better place. With the One Today app (U.S. only), you learn not only about the vital social issues facing us today but also create a small impact with a contribution. The donation can be as little as $1. You can also challenge your friends to match or go above your donation. The app features a new project every day, but you can also choose the causes you care about and give to them instead.

As Google says, One Today makes fundraising easy for nonprofits; it also makes giving simple and fun for users.

What’s Your Favorite Google App for The iPhone?

Thanks to the horde of apps to choose from on the App Store, it is easy to give those above a miss. This has partly been an exercise in curiosity about the little-known activities of a tech giant. It is always a pleasant surprise when some shadowy underdog catches our attention amidst the popular lineup of apps like Snapseed and Google Photos.

Did any of these Google apps catch your fancy? Are you using them? Which is the one Google app that is indispensable on your iPhone?

Google Voice, once Grand Central, is another example of Google just killing a wonderful app by trying to make it something else instead of concentrating on what it was when they bought it. This was by far the premier voice telephone app when Google bought it. Then instead of working with what it was to make it better, they forced it into their crappy face book clone and claimed it wasn't doing well because they refused to allow it to do what it was designed to do.

Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer's garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him looking for life hacks and learning tidbits. You can find him on LinkedIn & Twitter watching over the world.